Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist

By Laurie Foos

Book Overview

Above all, this satire of modern art, the middle class, and the media is great fun

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566890578
• ISBN13: 9781566890571
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

dark journey of an artist's soul

This is a disturbing novel. It's unsettling. It has sharp corners, shadows. It explores the seamy underside of the unconscious. The young artist has to go on vision quest through the valley of her inner and outer demons in order to emerge whole and empowered, a heroine and artist in the end. The story functions as a vision quest. A young girl in American suburbia with a bouffant mother, an assinine (and threatening) stepfather, tries to use her art to reconstruct and resurrect her lost and damned sculptor father, and doing so, finds herself. The surreal symbolism is effective with its many references to the underwater world, mating walruses, sharks, drowning. The bathtub where the sculptor father drowns becomes the sea from which the reborn heroine emerges. Brilliant, cerebral, risk-taking writing from the most innovative young writers of our time. After you read this novel, you will never look at pizza or bowling balls the same way again.

I want to give Frances a BIG HUG!

This book demonstrates how a true artist takes their work. It shows how her father couldn't really love her in the way she needs but her mother tries to make up for it and tries to clear away all the bad stuff from Frances's life. I related to this book in a way that made me feel that the book was written just for me, but backwards. Foos has a great perspective on an artists way of life. It's almost as if she is one herself. Although I am praising this book, it can be hard to follow at times. I found myself having to read some of the lines over again so I could understand. Other than that, I love this book.